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David Campos for assembly, Wendy Aragon for City College board, soda, Muni money and the anti-speculation tax round out a controversial list of election 2014 ENDORSEMENTS. Plus: Yarrr, it's the Treasure Island Music Fest! And a new book collects George Kuchar's shouts and murmurs. Articles Online | Digital Edition

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I'm serious. I listened to the news this morning on the radio, and I started to wonder if I hadn't gone through some kind of a time warp, back to the 1950s. The House Homeland Security Committee is actually holding hearings on whether members of a certain religion have become too radical -- and what the U.S. government can do about it.Read more »

Downtown hates democracy. Entities like the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce and San Francisco Chronicle prefer elections with well-financed frontrunners willing to do their bidding. They don't like messy democratic exercises like this year's mayoral elections, in which the crowded field of solid, evenly matched candidates will be looking for support from progressives as part of their ranked-choice voting strategies and any of several candidates could win.Read more »

So J-Lo walks out with the other judges in a kind of a three-way hug (with the girl in the middle, of course; this is American Idol, after all) and the first thing I can see is that massive glob of bright-red lipstick, so overwhelming and dominant that it's almost like some of those earliest colorized movies Ted Turner did, where the tinting is way off and it looks too weird. Course, as my daughter Vivian noted, her nails matched her lips, and that's cool. But all night, I couldn't even look at the panel without seeing: Giant. Red. Mouth.Read more »

If you do down to the BART station at 16th and Mission today (Thursday) from 3-5 p.m., you'll see banners that read ‘Get Your Free Fast Pass.” The PR blitz is the work of the MORE Public Transit Coalition, which is conducting a series of community bus pass clinics in the Mission, the Bayview and Chinatown in the coming weeks to help low-income families apply for free MUNI youth passes. Read more »

>>1. LEVANTA, GENTE! Apparently we're not the only students dipping into our beer funds to pay for classes – shit is hitting the fan again on the University of Puerto Rico campus, where the boricuas that shut down 11 university branches last spring are now fighting a new $800 student fee that kept 10 percent of their classmates home this term. Here in our country we're still sitting on our asses more or less, but it's the winter of si se puede (translated into Arabic, French, and Berber) – start marching to beat of the global drum at the Bay's world solidarity for PR event, tomorrow (Fri/11) at 4:30 p.m. at the 24th street BART station. Live plena and bomba music included.

Even though nothing I saw over the weekend had anything remotely to do with Mardi Gras (Sunday’s Motown Parade in the Fillmore, was on the radar, but I melt in the rain), subtle little visuals kept it very much on my mind. In fact, as I type this, it nags me that I’m missing out on another Rosenmontag, Rose Monday, which is being celebrated all across Germany, a blowout which rivals the best Carnival celebrations from around the world, packed with parades, costumed revelry, and oceans of bier. I’m trying to compensate with a Rammstein CD and a 21st Amendment IPA, but really, it isn’t the same. Let “next year in Cologne” be the rallying cry! There are so many ways to dream.

Despite there not being any roses in my Montag, rose red colored my weekend. First found swirling in the startling tsunami of stage blood spilled by Impact Theatre in their Russian-mafia-meets-Romeo-and-Juliet adaptation, it also glowed wickedly, stretched across the muscled torsos of the performers of Cirque Noveau, in a production that closed last weekend entitled Devil Fish.

The Chron’s attack came on the heels of Yee’s attempt to block Crane’s UC Regents confirmation. And Yee’s attempt to block Crane came in response to an op-ed Crane wrote for the Chron titled “Should public employees have collective bargaining rights?” Read more »

Stories aren't just for youngsters who read The Very Hungry Caterpillar before bed or tell scary tales around a campfire. The big kids need stories too, and lucky for San Francisco, the city boasts dynamic performers enacting mature and human stories on stage. Feeding complex chronicles to the souls of grown up audience members, Paul Flores, Living Word Project, Campo Santo and Word for Word do their parts to prove stories for big kids rule. Read more »

Just as the Board of Supervisors was gearing up to vote at its Mar. 8 meeting on a resolution defending the Haight Ashbury Neighborhood Council (HANC) Recycling Center against eviction from Golden Gate Park, Sup. Ross Mirkarimi noted that the Recreation & Parks Department had already filed an unlawful detainer against HANC, the first legal move in an eviction process. "I think that only escalates the matter, in what I believe is an unprincipled way," Mirkarimi said. Read more »

>>1. RADIO 1 "There's a robin singing/ his familiar tune again/ and all at once I'm clinging/ to the kiss of June again." Writing about Bay radio this week put us in a wistful mood, reminding us of KABL 960 AM (ding! ding!), the local golden oldies and big band station that was our sweet refuge from the shrieking dial of the 1990s. We wept when the station abruptly shut down in 2004, after 45 years of broadcasting classic Rat Pack, moony '30s and '40s standards, and a whole heapin helpin' of Rosemary Clooney. Lo and behold, through the magic of the gossamer Web, KABL lives again, and you can stream it! Dapper dinner parties, here you come.

When I made the promise to listen to 106 KMEL for this piece, I fantasized about a weekend afternoon listening to hip-hop from the golden era of the mid-'90s. I expected a few aggravating commercials, maybe an abrasive deejay or two. Nothing I couldn't handle, right? Wrong. Dead fucking wrong. Read more »

Spring has sprung and anyone walking by El Rio last Saturday would have seen the telltale signs -– a line of fashionably dressed folk spilling down the block, distant sounds of yesteryear audible from the street, and if that wasn't enough to get you interested, then the wafting scent of outdoor grilling was sure to get you through that door to find yourself at the best daytime soul BBQ and dance party to be found anywhere. Yes, another year of HardFrench is upon us. Read more »

Hole-y moley, it's time to say sayonara to Chaps, compadres – again. After assuming the name of the classic leather bar that called the DNA Lounge's address home in the '80s, Chaps II (as the 1225 Folsom location is formerly called) is switching identities to Kok Bar SF. Is the new moniker a sly wink to the once-was Kokpit bar of San Francisco gone by? Or have we perhaps been spending too much time at the new GLBT History Museum? Regardless, Saturday the 19th will be Chaps last night open before it metamorphs into Kok, which will reopen April 1 at 9 p.m. for cruising good times.

There's a good reason that not too many police chiefs become district attorneys. Obviously, not a lot of cops have law degrees, but it goes beyond that. The district attorney is supposed to monitor the police, to investigate criminal behavior by cops, to make sure the people out on the streets aren't doing anything that will screw up cases in court.

But that didn't bother former Mayor Gavin Newsom (who apparently doesn't think that conflict-of-interest statutes apply to him). Newsom appointed Gascón to the D.A.'s job despite some serious concerns about the operations of the Police Department — and problems at the SFPD have blown up yet again. Four times in the past two weeks, Public Defender Jeff Adachi has released videotapes showing undercover cops entering residential hotel rooms without a warrant. The videos appear to contradict the information that the officers presented in their written reports, and the pattern of conduct has caused interim Chief Jeff Godown to suspend the entire undercover narcotics unit at Southern Station. Read more »